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Patrick Bond Calls COP18 a Conference of Polluters

Patrick Bond, author of Politics of Climate Justice was in his usual fighting fit form when interviewed by Busani Bafana of the Inter Press Service recently about COP18. He believes the conference, this year held in Doha, Qatar, to be a “conference of polluters” and says the world must find a way to fight against pollution and climate change within the world climate justice movement.

There is no political will among rich nations to find funding for developing countries experiencing the brunt of changes in global weather patterns, and the current climate change conference will fail to do so, according to Professor Patrick Bond, a leading thinker and analyst on climate change issues.

“The elites continue to discredit themselves at every opportunity. The only solution is to turn away from these destructive conferences and avoid giving the elites any legitimacy, and instead, to analyse and build the world climate justice movement and its alternatives,” Bond, a political economist and also the director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa, told IPS.